Original question text by @phantomwise@lemmy.ml
What are the modern design trends you hate most? Feel free to rant! Mine are:
- Physical buttons are out of fashion, now EVERYTHING must have a touch screen instead! Especially if it makes the appliance more inconvenient to use. Like having to press a flimsy touch screen ten times to scroll through a washing machine’s programs instead of just turning a physical knob and pressing a physical start button.
- Every website looks like it’s made for a phone and was vomited by the same app in slightly different flavors of vomit.
- Actually EVERYTHING looks like it’s made for a phone… Like what’s the deal with all those hamburger menus on DESKTOP apps? Please just put a regular menu and same me some pointless clicking, it’s not like you’re lacking screen space. I especially hate that those menus can’t be opened from the keyboard like regular menus.
1.) Everything is a “smart” device. Household appliances, as a general rule, should not be connectable to the internet or require an app.
Cheaper components, poor build quality, and lack of user serviceable parts are the primary reasons your washer and dryer last 10 years compared to your parents Maytag set that was still ticking away after 30. Cheap, unnecessary electronics, which don’t have as long a lifespan as mechanical timers and switches, only exacerbate this problem.
2.) Cordless tools as a means of vendor locking customers.
I feel like I should bring back this timeless Tumblr post. I do not want internet on any of my appliances, and nobody should.
As an engineer, Home Assistant (purely local smart home hub) is fucking awesome and only gets better.
I’m way more inclined to connect my devices if I can actually control them and not just have random seemingly pointless data about me harvested. But mostly we just don’t get that choice.
Smart is fine if and only if:
- Not the only way to interact with the device
- Supports open, local-only protocols like Zigbee or Matter
- the lets put a lot of shit in the title bar of our app trend. Fuck off, I use that bar to pull the window around.
- The idea that I should adapt to the technology, and not the other way around. Don’t force changes on me, especially when they’re only implemented to be able to slap a new version number on the box.
Light themes as default. I don’t want to be maced with photons. Dark themes always please.
Counter offer: dark themes as default for professional software.
I don’t write software in a dimly light geek cave, I do it in a well lit office. And I can’t tell that dark red string from the background.
Farmhouse modern
Also anything that looks like it comes from Kirkland’s, because there’s a good bit of overlap:
I hate single page apps that force you to click on a post to see comments, and don’t let you open them in a new tab.
Items are no longer made to last past their warranty.
They are made to last past the time you’re allowed to leave a review.
I’d like to leave a positive review of this comment, but the review period has expired.
Infinite scroll
Enshitification of search results when shopping
Planned obsolescence
Long winding UI Dialouge trees that you can get “stuck” in! If my settings are invalid, let me out of of the menu with as little consiquences and sacrifices as you can manage. I may need to back out to go grab data or change a setting on a page you decided to make before (hell even after) the one that wont let me continue and/or go back.
Windows’s “wizard” style dialouges just suck!
Everybody everywhere in the whole wide world is wearing blundstone boots!
Heatpumps in front of houses.
The “toggle switch”. In the past we had these checkboxes. A black square. If it had a x or check mark in it, it meant this option was active, otherwise not.
Now we have these fancy toggle switches. If it’s on the left side, is it on or off? What if it’s blue, or grey?
Left is always off, right is on. Generally a toggle switch indicates an immediate change, whereas a checkbox can have a delayed effect. Colours are optional but generally a colour indicates the switch is turned on.
left is definetly not always off. i am curious what you mean by delayed effect that cannot also affect a checkbox. especially if some cookie settings now havetoggles with three options, each one in a different color, some just slide between the rightmosg and middle option etc.
no matter what you say, this is not intuitive, a checkbox is! if there are more than two options, choose another ui element. foem over function is way too common for (at least my) comfort nowadays
The removal of bezels on phones, the camera cutouts sometimes have issues and its all together worse, just for a technically larger screen, and Apps, so many apps are just packaged web browsers, but with more access to private information and such.
I don’t understand why they need the have the lenses in a bump. Just make the phone a bit thicker with a bigger battery
Yes this is so dumb. Razor thin phone with massive camera bumps. Who is asking for this?
Especially when the first thing you do is get a case to protect the cameras and make the phone sit level on a table
I think that’s kind of the thing. They can’t physically make the camera any smaller, but they assume you’re going to make the phone thicker with a case. So it’s a compromise based on customer preference.
Well ideally they would just make the phone more durable without a case, and the full thickness of the camera filled with battery, headphone jack, etc.
Seriously so much smartphone design is based on initial appeal, not actual usability.
For me, the issue isn’t just about durability, it’s also about how a cheap clear TPU case is way grippier than the metal or glass of the phone itself.
I love my Xperia, still has bezels and it makes the phone easier to hold imo
Minimalism.
It’s everywhere from company logos, to fast food interior design, and now the vexillology community swears by minimalist flag designs.
The open floor plan was the beginning of our demise.
Almighty Profit Motive™ forbid we proles find any semblance of joy in our lives and - gasp - interact with the physical world around us in any meaningful and engaged way!
No, we must be deprived of all dopamine outside of our designated corporate brainrot centers.
Nothing is fun anymore. Seriously. Modern designers do not design fun things anymore. No matter what it is, cell phones, cars, dining chairs, there is nothing fun. Nothing invites interaction. Nothing invites relationship building.
I saw this thing the other day. The “Jack in a Box” Television by Timo Salli for the short-lived studio SNOWCRASH. Made in 1997. Where the fuck is this energy nowadays?? Everything looks either angry or bored with us now. It’s all so antagonistic with no justification. Zero whimsy, zero intrigue. Why does this walmart toaster look like it wants to fight me? Designers’ personalities are erased with nothing to show for it but row after row of the same matte white or piano black plastic SHIT (30% OFF!)
Highly recommend the When Phones were Fun series.
Fun videos; thanks for sharing
Every electronic item whether it be a hot water kettle, air conditioner or an UPS backup in my camper, even my electric toothbrush has to make a noise, a bing or beep when either the things starts, changes phase or finishes.